The man was initially accused of uploading 23,000 music tracks to the popular filesharing application Direct Connect but Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s (APB) "use of questionable investigative techniques forced the prosecutor to withdraw some of the charges", down to about 4500 tracks. The man was also accused of uploading 30 movies.

Instead of jail time, the man received a suspended sentence and a "heavy fine." The prosecutors were asking for jail time for the man, but the judge had this to say, “this is a task for the government, that by legislative means or in other ways take the necessary actions” to come to a solution to the problem.

More interestingly, the court even implied that the music industry needs to take some responsibility for the current situation they are in, where piracy is rampant, and many have little respect for copyright laws.

The fine however, is decently large and comes out to about 54670 kronor ($10,000 USD) including court fees he must pay back.

Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, commented on the trial:

“A consequence of the court having increased the sanctions in this case is that it will be easier to make ISPs give out information on IP addresses [in the future]. This of course affects the possibilities to act against these kinds of crimes.”

Morgan Gerdin, the defense lawyer, still feels her client was innocent. “The District Court hasn’t observed the technical evidence. It is not possible from that evidence to conclude that my client has been filesharing. He should have been found not guilty.”

Magnus Eriksson, spokesperson for Piratbyrån, sees the verdict as insignificant however and tells filesharers to continue their hobby without risking prosecution. “The outcome of the verdict is based on the amount of files shared by this person. With more modern filesharing software [BitTorrent], it isn’t possible to see all the files that one person is sharing.”

You gotta know when to quit, lay low for awhile and continue later. For that reason I only use approved mp3 subscription sites like Napster. Lets say that you rip your whole collection of originals onto your computer and somehow they were snoop into your PC and find all of your music, they go after you but you no longer have the originals to prove you did not obtain them illegally. What’s going to happen then? The RIAA has been using illegal practices to get individuals without knowing whether or not the music has been obtained legally. This dude had it coming though, uploaders are caught more frequently than downloaders, he was lucky indeed for only receiving monetary fines.